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Friday, 13 September 2013

Custody of the senses and of the mind...avoiding division....etc. Good for many reasons. Sunday is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Pray to her to reveal to you the predominant fault, defects, and satanic influences. She will protect us. Dads and other protectors, listen to this.

One of the great insights is the sin of simulation-which is one trying to be too holy too fast and ending up in burn-up. This is a process, folks.

And, towards the end, the sin of effeminacy in men....superb.

Look into this group as well if there are serious problems in your family.

Now, I have not seen this movie since the first time I saw it in 1960. I was eleven. My dear Uncle Charles, who died last year on November 11th, would take one of my brothers and I to the movies frequently. He is responsible for my love of the cinema. He was also my Godfather. May he rest in peace.

But, yesterday, a friend of mine in Germany reminded me of this film, The Time Machine. She, too, saw it as a child and was affected by it. Despite its limitations, the movie, based on the novel by H. G. Wells, seemed prophetic to those of us growing up practicing nuclear war drills in schools, which, by the way, in tornado alley, was just one more drill among many.

Now, the point of the movie, and the novel, is that mankind destroyed most of the world, with the help of the nuclear winter, and only two groups evolved-the predators, called the Morlocks, who raise and eat the Eloi, the peter pans. The Eloi have become rather stupid, apathetic, docile and fearful creatures. But, they finally rise up with the help of the Time Traveler, and defeat the Worlocks.

When I saw it, the Cold War was at its height. We were aware of both apathetic and stupid nations as well as predator nations. I was intrigued that a man from Victorian England had to put "gumption", as we say in the Midwest, back into Eloi in order for them to defend themselves. I especially liked the

3) Putin came in on his white horse and cleared up the problem, supposedly.

4) Obama gave Putin a blank check to redeem the Middle East and make Americans look like the bad guys.

5) Putin just sent a back-order of more weapons to Syria.

6) Rebels are making fun of Obama as the big fail.

7) Iran comes in with threats of nuclear war against America.

8) Potus manipulates, almost, the American public into thinking he is reconsidering strikes. But, he is just a pawn for bigger powers.

9) The neo-cons want war, for whatever reason.

10) Natural gas and more oil have been discovered and a plan for oil to go from Saudi Arabia to Europe is on the table. But, who is in the way?

11) Europe is bankrupt and would benefit from a war. Industry would start up again, etc.

12) Putin can look like the good guy, solving all the problems of the world for his own reasons. The man is smart, really smart.

13) Americans cannot think in realpolitik terms and miss the entire point of compromise, which is the name of the game in the Middle East, unless we have enough real men for a new crusade.

14) No European country or Russian has succeeded ever in ruling the Middle East since the creation of Islam.

15) Muslims want global domination. Maybe two big countries who hate America would use them to break the West. The Chinese come in from the East, Russia from the north, and the Muslims from the Middle East, in a pincer movement which kills Europe and America.

I first had this idea in the summer of 2008 and even saw the map clearly in my head. I thought it was connected with the election of Potus, later in the year, but he is just a pawn.

Gnosticism, according to some, is the heresy of England. I think it is Pelagianism, but I shall put on my friends' thinking caps for a mo and consider Gnosticism as the major problem of the ordinary Catholics.

Gnosticism is behind all the New Age false programs and so-called spiritualities. But, here is the real definition from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedienceof mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know. A more complete and historical definition of Gnosticism would be:

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealisticsects, which flourished from some timebefore the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the wholeuniverse a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness ofmatter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

However unsatisfactory this definition may be, the obscurity, multiplicity, and wild confusion of Gnostic systems will hardly allow of another.

Gnosticism reveals itself among the charismatics and those who are looking for special knowledge. It accounts for self-satisfied groups who only want good feelings and the cookies of consolations from God.

But the real dangers, are the beliefs in those deities or powers or even spiritualities not connected with Christ Himself or the Trinity. There is no such thing as neutral powers.

Here is the CE again.

Gnosticism is thinly disguised Pantheism. In the beginning was the Depth; the Fulness of Being; the Not-Being God; the First Father, the Monad, the Man; the First Source, the unknown God (Bythos pleroma, ouk on theos, propator, monas, anthropos, proarche, hagnostos theos), or by whatever other name it might be called. This undefined infinite Something, though it might be addressed by the title of the GoodGod, was not a personal Being, but, like Tad of Brahma of the Hindus, the "Great Unknown" of modern thought. The Unknown God, however, was in the beginning pure spirituality; matter as yet was not.

This source of all being causes to emanate (proballei) from itself a number of pure spirit forces. In the different systems theseemanations are differently named, classified, and described, but the emanation theory itself is common too all forms of Gnosticism. In the Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (uiotetes), in Valentinianism they form antithetic pairs or "syzygies" (syzygoi); Depth and Silence produce Mind and Truth; these produce Reason and Life, these again Man and State (ekklesia). According to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds.

These are the primary roots of the Æons. With bewildering fertility hierarchies of Æons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. These Æons belong to the purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate they form the pleroma.

The transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible, is brought about by a flaw, or a passion, or asin, in one of the Æons. According to Basilides, it is a flaw in the last sonship; according to others it is the passion of the femaleÆon Sophia; according to others the sin of the Great Archon, or Æon-Creator, of the Universe.

The ultimate end of all Gnosis is metanoia, or repentance, the undoing of the sin of material existence and the return to the Pleroma.

In the greater number of Gnostic systems an important role is played by the Æon Wisdom — Sophia or Achamoth. In some sense she seems to represent the supreme female principle, as for instance in the Ptolemaic system, in which the mother of the seven heavens is called Achamoth, in the Valentinian system, in which he ano Sophia, the Wisdom above, is distinguished from he kato Sophia, or Achamoth, the former being the female principle of the noumenal world, and in the Archotian system, where we find a "Lightsome Mother" (he meter he photeine), and in which beyond the heavens of the Archons is he meter ton panton and likewise in the Barbelognosis, where the female Barbelos is but the counterpart of the Unknown Father, which also occurs amongst the Ophites described by Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.7.4).

I am sure many of you will recognize just some of these beliefs as held by your family members or even pastors.

There is more, but the dangers include also, a clinging together of little groups of people who think that they are in the know about things in the Church and no one else. These cliques may be in chancery offices, or schools, or parishes and purposefully exclude others who are not in the know.

The other great error of Gnosticism is the denial of the need for personal redemption or salvation-a person just grows as society evolves, and another heresy, that of progressivism, which holds that people will evolve into holy, good people, is connected . This is the great heresy of Star Trek. Gnosticism denies grace and redemption and relies on the secret knowledge of the few.

Part of the nonsense and nastiness on line has been caused by cliques who either are in the know or want to be in the know or think they are in the know.

Thankfully, I aspire to none of this private, inner knowledge of the workings of the Church. I am merely, a Catholic.

In the past two weeks, I have watched the laity tear themselves apart arguing about personal things. The reasons for such arguing has been the heresies, the faulty thinking of Gnosticism and Donatism. Now most people do not know that they are Gnosticism or Donatists; in fact if I suggested this, they would think that I fell out of a tree.

Let me start with Donatism. Donatism is the heresy which noted that those who once one fell away from the Church one could not come back, and if a priest sinned, he would not be accepted by the community for dispensing sacraments.

The Donatists wanted a Church merely of saints and not sinners. Some of the Donatists would have hated any of the clergy who offered sacrifices to the gods, and would not receive the sacraments from them. They denied ex opere operato, which means that they insisted that the sacraments were not valid if the priest had sinned seriously. Of course, the real meaning of the sacraments involves the belief that the holiness of God and the grace of the sacrament are sufficient. The heresy was condemned the Council of Arles in 314.

How many people today condemn priests and bishops as too sinful to be in the Church? Not only is this a lack of charity, but a lack of humility. As one sees one's own sins more clearly, one refrains from judgement.

We can criticize faulty thinking, and heresies are faulting thinking, but we cannot attack anyone personally.

Only those who are immature blame others for their own actions or lack thereof. Once a person comes into maturity, one no longer blames others. This is a sign of the strengthening of the inner man, the creation of character.

Leon Bloy

Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma

The Church Must Not Be Defensive

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Too many Church leaders do not think, or do not think as Catholics

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GUILD PRAYER

God our Father, source of life and freedom, through Your Holy Spirit you gave the Carmelite, Titus Brandsma the courage to affirm human dignity even in the midst of suffering and degrading persecution.

Grant us that same spirit so that, in refusing all compromise with error we may always and everywhere give coherent witness to Your abiding presence among us.